The USk Seattle
admin team decided that we weren’t going to cry over lost sketching. For the same
weekend that would have been the Sketch Crawl, we scheduled an extravaganza of
outings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Not intended to be a formal replacement
for the cancelled event, it was just a way to give everyone as many sketch
outing options as possible as we move toward the waning days of summer.

8/11/17 Space Needle

On Friday we met at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which has become something of a summertime
staple. Although I sketch Calder’s Eagle just about every time I visit (last year, twicein 2014 and in 2013), I was magnetically drawn to
it yet again. This time, however, I chose a partial view, and as I sketched, I
remembered fondly Calder’s similar but much larger Flamingo in Chicago.

I wandered around the park a long time, simply enjoying
the not-too-hot sunshine and not feeling particularly compelled – until I saw
the Space Needle peeking over some buildings. Then with only a few minutes
before the throwdown, I made a quick sketch above the amphitheater with Richard Serra’s Wake in the background.
The empty space on the page was a good spot to hold the badge that Kate had
playfully given to participants.

8/11/17 Amphitheater and Richard Serra's Wake

8/12/17 Sketcher on the ferry

For Saturday, Day 2 of our extravaganza, we chose
Bainbridge Island for an entire day of sketching. Meeting up on the ferry, most
of us started sketching right away, and I spotted a woman I didn’t know who
looked like she was sketching, too. When we talked to her later, it turned out
Martha was aware of Urban Sketchers but didn’t know we would be on the ferry
that day. A life drawing student, she simply enjoys sketching people on the
ferry. Imagine meeting a sketcher in the wild who isn’t part of Urban Sketchers
while we’re on our way to a sketch outing!

After the initial meetup in Winslow, I headed for the
Bainbridge Farmers Market, where I was lured by music and the smells of good
foods cooking. I had to leave the house so early to catch the ferry that I had skipped
breakfast, so I ate a big piece of carrot cake while sketching Good Karma
Blues, a lively band with a terrific vocalist.

8/12/17 Good Karma Blues at Bainbridge Farmers Market

8/12/17 Eagle Harbor

That was a lot of fun, and I could have stayed all day
sketching nothing but the market, but I was on an island, after all, so I found
myself gravitating toward the water. At Eagle Harbor, the sun started to break
through the overcast sky as a few lazy boats knocked against a pier.

After the sketchbook throwdown, the group split up – some
going to Rolling Bay to take part in the art studio tour and some staying in
Winslow for lunch and whatever. I opted for the latter, and after a leisurely
lunch of symposium gossip, half the afternoon zipped by on island time. A few
of us went to the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, where local artist Bill Hemp has an exhibit of pen and ink drawings of island locations.
Interestingly, the pieces are reproductions of his sketchbook pages that look
like they are torn right out of a spiral-bound book.

While I often have opportunities to sketch ferries, I see
them only when they are either stopped briefly at a dock or a long distance
away where it’s hard to see details. I took advantage of a moored ferry near
the Winslow terminal to squeeze in one last sketch before hopping on the ferry
back to Seattle. I think being able to take my time to observe and draw all the
details on this one will help me fake it a little more realistically next time
I need to sketch a ferry on the fly.

8/12/17 Washington State Ferry at Winslow terminal

For our third and final day, we chose the West Seattle
Farmers Market, one of Seattle’s few neighborhood markets that are open all
year round. As I was driving across the West Seattle Bridge, the drizzle on my
windshield started looking like it could be “measurable” rain, which made me
wonder if we had finally ended our record-breaking spell of consecutive dry
days. I also started wondering if our sketch outing would end in a soggy mess.
As it turned out, we did end our dry streak with 56 consecutive rainless days, but I needn’t have worried about sogginess – the
measurable drizzle stopped as quickly as it had begun, and it was my favorite
sketching weather – a comfortable temperature, not windy, the sun darting in
and out of clouds just often enough to provide shadows or light, whichever you
need at the moment.

8/13/17 Bluegrass band at West Seattle Farmers Market

I mentioned a few days ago that I had hardly sketched any people in Chicago, so today I made up for it.
A lively bluegrass band, a young cellist, and a guitarist standing in front of
a huge mural all provided the tunes for a fun morning at the farmers market.

Your 3 day sketch crawl sounds like a lot of fun. It is great to see all the sketches you were able to do in the different locations. Rumor has it they are planning an East Coast sketch meetup, but I think it will be in Quebec. I've never been there and it is probably about an 8 hour drive from here. Participation for me will depend on the date they actually pick.